Yeah, I was talking about, like, Crowley and Gabriel, not Beezlebub. Those kinds of characters sometimes feel a bit like...Dumbledore as gay rep? Like, an actual real life headmaster whose sexuality never came up while I was at school would be a real gay man, and there's nothing inherently wrong with having characters like that, but it's not something I'd hold up as Representation. This metaphor isn't quite working for me, since the Dumbledore situation could happen in real life while angels etc don't but...*flails vaguely*
I forgot about Provenance! I had complicated feelings: the individual "they" characters definitely felt non-binary, although in ambivalent category, and I could 100% believe a society having gender work that way. But it grated a bit that there was no acknowledgement in the text that this gender system is still restrictive, and there would be trans people who didn't fit that society's boxes, just like there are in ours.
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I forgot about Provenance! I had complicated feelings: the individual "they" characters definitely felt non-binary, although in ambivalent category, and I could 100% believe a society having gender work that way. But it grated a bit that there was no acknowledgement in the text that this gender system is still restrictive, and there would be trans people who didn't fit that society's boxes, just like there are in ours.